Senior leadership led the ISU women’s swim team to a record finish at the Big 12 Relays last Friday.

Every one of the Cyclones’ relay teams contained at least one senior competitor.

“That’s the strength of our team — senior leaders,” head coach Duane Sorenson said. “Our expectation is that when athletes become seniors, they are our power. We want them to go out with a bang, achieve their lifetime best and succeed as much as they can.”

Iowa State finished fourth at the Big 12 Relays. Sorenson said the team had two main goals for the meet.

“Our first goal was to stand up and race against Big 12 schools and we did a nice job of that,” Sorenson said.

“The second was to better our total points at the meet. We improved our place to fourth — the highest we’ve had since the Big 12 Relays started.”

Senior Suzanne Notbohm said the team wants to be more competitive with conference schools.

“We wanted to get in the routine of racing Big 12 schools,” Notbohm said. “We had our best placing since I’ve been here.”

The Cyclones returned to the pool on Saturday to again face two Big 12 competitors. Iowa State fell 195-105 to Texas A&M and raced against Missouri in an unscored exhibition meet. The Aggies were No. 22 in the nation at the end of last season.

“We wanted to step up and race Texas A&M since they are in the top 25,” Notbohm said.

“It was a good meet to see where we are at.”

Senior Petra Plaminkova said the team was glad to have the chance to compete at Beyer Pool.

“We wanted to cheer each other and support each other,” Plaminkova said.

Going into the weekend, Sorenson said there were three freshmen on the team to watch. Lauren Breunig, from Mazomanie, Wis., Chelsey Walden, from Woodbury, Minn., and Cassandra Nelson, from West Des Moines, were all high school state champions in their respective events.

Sorenson said Breunig competed extremely well for her first collegiate competition. Bruenig anchored the 100-medley relay, which took second place in the Big 12 Relays, and the 400-freestyle relay, which took third. She also anchored the 200-medley relay, which took third at the Texas A&M meet.

“Lauren did outstanding; she competed extremely well,” Sorenson said. “She anchored a couple of relays and really stood up and raced.”

Walden swam in back-to-back freestyle races.

“Chelsey swam in the 1000-free then turned around and swam the 200-free and later the 500-free,” Sorenson said.

“She did a lot of racing and fared quite well.”

Nelson had an injured shoulder but was still able to compete.

“Cassandra was only at about 80 percent [of her potential],” Sorenson said.

Overall, Sorenson said he was proud of the performances of the freshmen on the team.

“They all have room to improve, but I like what I see,” Sorenson said.

The Cyclones will travel to Minneapolis on Saturday to compete against the Golden Gophers.

“Minnesota is a big challenge,” Plaminkova said.

Notbohm said Minnesota is a strong team.

“We’ve had some hard training and we want to bring that into the meet,” Notbohm said. “It’s always good for us to race them.”

Sorenson said Minnesota has not had a meet yet, so the Cyclones don’t know what to expect.

“We don’t know what their strengths and weaknesses are,” Sorenson said.

“We’re also working on making the little corrections that we need this week in practice and we will see the results of these corrections in a race setting on Saturday. It’s our first road trip and it’s a chance to get out of Ames and out of our pool.”

Notbohm said the challenge doesn’t change based on whether the team competes at home or away.

“We want to make their pool our pool,” she said.